________________________________________________________________________________ [http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/20715.html] Search Reveals Unequal Access by Louise Knapp 3:00 p.m. 13.Jul.99.PDT A new study illustrates that the leading search engines do a pretty poor job of covering the mass of information found on the Web. The study, "Accessibility and Distribution of Information on the Web," conducted by the NEC Research Institute, looked at the performance of 11 search engines: AltaVista, EuroSeek, Excite, Google, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, Microsoft, Northern Light, Snap, and Yahoo. Each engine was analyzed on the basis of its responses to 1,050 "real world" search requests. Northern Light and Snap came in at the top with, respectively, 38 percent and 37 percent of coverage, measured against the 100 percent offered by the combined results of the 11 search engines. Excite, Euroseek, and Infoseek trailed the pack with success rates of 13.5 percent, 6 percent, and 5 percent, respectively. In relation to coverage of the Web overall, Northern Light and Snap again came out ahead at 16 percent and 15 percent, while the last-place laggers were Excite at 6 percent, Lycos at 3 percent, and Euroseek at 2 percent. The study highlighted the fact that search engines are increasingly falling behind in their efforts to provide thorough coverage of the Web. NEC speculated that the reason behind this poor coverage may be a lack of monetary incentive. Large indexes cost more to create and can result in longer response time to queries. The study also indicated that search engines do not offer equal access to material on the Web. For example, search engines typically use two methods for locating sites: The engine will either follow links to new pages or go to pages with high user registration. So sites with many links to them will likely pop up again and again in a search. In another illustration of the Catch-22 situation faced by fledgling or little-hit sites, some search engines, such as Google, use "popularity" as a criterion for choosing pages to turn up in a search. Thus, popular pages become ever more popular while new, unlinked pages languish in the ether. ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 1999 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org